SAM WESTROP: Moderate Islam Falters in the Face of Silicon Valley Censorship.

It is not just conservatives who are targeted. Long before the removal of my BBC debate on Islamism, moderate Muslims and critics of Islamist political ideology found themselves subject to bans and restrictions on social media for articulating reasonable ideas and criticisms that deserve debate rather than restriction.

Since July 2016, Google has censored videos published on YouTube by Prager U, a digital-media publisher that produces short videos discussing topical questions. Restricted videos included presentations about Islamism given by moderate Muslim voices, including by Kasim Hafeez, a British Muslim who now speaks out against the same Islamist anti-Semitism in which he once believed; Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an anti-Islamist campaigner and women’s-rights activist; and Khurram Dara, a prominent American Muslim author.

In 2017, Ex-Muslims of North America (EXMNA) was targeted by “a coordinated reporting and flagging campaign” that led to Facebook’s restricting their posts. EXMNA opposes radical Islam and offers a home to apostates facing abuse and persecution. Nothing it posts on social media is remotely hateful.

In fact, censorship of anti-Islamist voices by Silicon Valley is now an almost weekly occurrence.

It’s almost as though they’re on the other side.